The God and Government Project

Longtime readers of this blog may remember my occasional battles with John Lofton, a dyed-in-the-wool theocrat. He is now directing the God and Government Project for the Institute on the Constitution, the same group that school in Ohio invited in to teach a course, which was subsequently canceled. He explains what that is:

The purpose of this project is to inform all our civil government officials that their first duty is to obey God, to administer and apply His Law in whatever office they hold. One way we will inform public officials of their duty to obey God is by going before city and county governing bodies to speak for the allowed two or five minutes that is allowed for citizens to make statements. I have written several statements that fit such time slots and will be glad to work with you. All you have to do is deliver this important witness.

Here’s a sample statement he has put together for people to read at local legislative meetings:

My name is __________________. And I wanted to come here this evening to tell about what God says is the duty of those holding the public office you hold.

In the 13th chapter of the book of Romans in the New Testament, God’s says that those who govern us, such as this (yourselves, this Council, whatever) are ministers of God — that actual word “minister” is used. And that you are a minister of God to us for good, for good, as defined by God’s Word. And that you are, conversely, to bring wrath on those who are evil — evil as defined by God’s Word.

Thus, your job is ministerial and not legislative. Your job is to administer and apply God’s Law. And this means it is not the role of government to house or feed or clothe or give health care or education or welfare to anyone. There is no Biblical authority for that kind of thing. The provision of those things is the job of Christ’s Church.

Romans 13 also tells us that a law is just or unjust depending on whether it is in accord with what God says or whether it is at odds with God’s Law. That is the teaching of the Bible, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, the British jurist William Blackstone and Martin Luther King in his “Letter From The Birmingham Jail.”

In that “Letter,” Dr. King said, and I quote: “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God….An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law,” unquote. King said, and again I quote him directly: “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’.” The word legal in this letter is in direct quotes, King’s point being that what Hitler did in Nazi Germany was not legal because it was against the Laws of God.

Thank you very much. And may God bless us all as we obey Him.

The quote from MLK is particularly amusing because, as Warren Throckmorton points out, Lofton has elsewhere called King “one of the most grossly immoral hypocrites in American history. And the League of the South, which is affiliated with the IOTC, has said:

Only a sick and reprobate society would elevate Martin Luther King, Jr., and demonize Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The former sought to manipulate white guilt and use the power of national government for the ends of black racial advancement; the latter risked their lives on the field of battle to preserve the true principles of Constitutional government and the integrity of their homeland. To King and his ilk (both then and now), the U.S. Constitution and the Bible are nothing more than words to be twisted in service of the liberal vision of the good life. To Lee and Jackson, and those who honor them, they are the wellsprings of Christian liberty and prosperity.

There can be no compromise between the worldviews of those who follow MLK and those who salute Lee and Jackson. Moreover, there is no way that a man can, in good conscience, pay homage to both sides at the same time.

My name is nkrishna and I wanted to come here this evening to tell about what God says is the duty of those holding the public office you hold. Of course, the god in question is Ganesh, and he says there will be free candy for everyone and cars should be replaced by mice for people to ride. There can be no compromise. Our first duty is to administer and apply this law.

I love how they completely deny any form of governmental assistance, stating that this is the role of the church. They say this right after claiming that all people elected to government are “ministers of god”. So… doesn’t that mean that welfare as provided by government is, in effect, a church program anyway? Shouldn’t Lofton be totally in favor of it then?

Check out the rest of the “Christian Observer” site if you can stomach it. Dominionism from one end to the other.

Artor

Why is it so hard for wingnuts to understand that the US is governed by the Constitution, not the Bible, no matter how much they wish it was otherwise. Explaining to an elected official that his job is to uphold biblical law should be met with nothing other than disdain and laughter.

There can be no compromise between the worldviews of those who follow MLK and those who salute Lee and Jackson. Moreover, there is no way that a man can, in good conscience, pay homage to both sides at the same time.

I agree 100%; those who salute Lee and Jackson are racist scumfucks, a position which can in no way be on the same side as MLK, for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

exdrone

I hope that the instructions that came with the sample statement specify that it is to be read in a robotic voice so that people at the meeting don’t wrongly assume that the reader put any original thought in it. Also, the possibility exists that more than one person will end up reading the same statement at a meeting. So if the first person says, “My name is Long Underline”, then the next person has to remember to say, “My name is also Long Underline.”

F [is for failure to emerge]

Oh, FFS. Honk! Wrong.

pianoman, Heathen & Torontophile

so basically, what we have here is that the only thing religious wingnuts can think to do now is to just try to put forth types of legislation that they know flies in the face of the constitution, thay they must know won’t pass judicial muster, that they must know is a colossal waste of taxpayer resources via the amount of time spent trying to enact these laws, and the subsequent legal fighting.

all this nonsense and stupidity simply to appease an inarticulate, incurious, uneducated segment of the population who have nothing more important to do with their lives. so jesus said somewhere “go out and be a complete fucking nuisance to the rational people in your country”?

naturalcynic

I honor Lee and Jackson like I honor Rommel and Skorzeny.

cag

My name is Kent Hovind …..

colnago80

Re naturalcynic @v #13

Pairing Rommel with Skorzeny is totally unfair to the former. Rommel eventually came to recognize the criminality of Frankenberger and involved himself in the assassination plot. When it failed, he was forced to commit suicide in order to save his family from Frankenberger’s wrath.

donnamelton

my friend’s aunt makes $83 hourly on the laptop. She has been unemployed for eight months but last month her payment was $13781 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Go to this web site and read more… C­A­ℕ­9­9.C­O­M

Ironic that an organization calling itself the “Institute on the Constitution” doesn’t believe the first duty of elected officials is to follow the Constitution.

monimonika

Ooh! Can someone go up and read out #16 donnamelton’s comment at these meetings!? Please?

gardengnome

“The purpose of this project is to inform all our civil government officials that I think their first duty is to obey my God, to administer and apply my god’s Law in whatever office they hold. One way we will inform public officials of their duty to obey my God is by going before city and county governing bodies to speak for the allowed two or five minutes that is allowed for citizens to make statements.”

There, now it reads correctly!

dan4

@15: His last name was HITLER, you idiot.

jba55

@dan4: Don’t let it get to you. On top of being a completely vile person with genocidal fantasies almost as big as Hitlers colnago80 is also a name change denialist. He seems to think that if there is a possibility that you could have had a name that might, somehow, reflect poorly on you and you don’t share his political ideals then he’s justified in using the wrong name to… well, I don’t even know what his goal is other than annoying people on the internet. He’s a troll, I suggest ignoring him.

dingojack

Dan – Well what would expect from a guy whose only hobbies seem to be riding tubular bells and imagining dropping 15Mt nuclear devices* on any one (or thing) that displeases him (‘Mmmmmm. Holocaust’! [/SLC’s Homer impersonation]).

Dingo

——–

* never mind that no one actually has such devices, and that even if they did, they have no way to deliver them to target. Internet Tough Guys need no logic.

dingojack

My dear SPAMBOT –

Thanks to your idiotic bombing of this site I have taken the liberty of creating a simple spreadsheet to test your claims.

If one earns $13781 a month that would be $165372 p.a or $452.76 a week.

$452.76 a week at $83 per hour means you’d be working over 38 hours a week.

Why not simply get a real job instead of working full-time spambombing sites that are likely to fact-check your idiotic claims and find them false?

Remember if the parent site doesn’t rope in suckers then you won’t get paid. You’ll be an unemployed loser with no laptop (repossessed), earning $0 a month who was scammed out of time and money all for the promise of a rubber check you heard that someone might possibly have got, somewhere..

Disrespectfully,

Dingo

haitied

It would seem that upon hearing that circular logic was bad and to be avoided, Loften opted for a form of logic that spiraled out of control and crash landed.